rogue cornstalks flutter

rogue cornstalks flutter

above a field of rattling

soybeans ripe for harvest

Driving after dark on our back country road, we see monstrous bright lights in the fields, combines harvesting hybrid corn and soybeans. This morning I pass a field of soybeans, their monochrome brown punctuated by rogue cornstalks sticking up like standards in a battlefield. 
          Kernels from the ears of hybrid corn are not used as seed because the offspring of these plants do not resemble their cross-bred parents. Nevertheless, some kernels from last year's corn crop have managed to survive harvesting, harrowing, freezing, tilling and the planting of soybeans to pop up at random in an otherwise unvarying landscape.

In another field planted with corn, the stalks form dense rows of rustling dry leaves. Farmers in this area grow two cash crops, corn and soybeans. They usually rotate the two crops on their fields in alternate years. This is because grass crops such as corn are unable to take nitrogen from the air, so they need nitrogen in the soil. Legume crops such as soybeans have bacteria on nodules on their roots which take nitrogen from the air and fix it into the soil. So the corn planted the following year is able to use the nitrogen provided by the soybeans. 
          Of course, many farmers also add chemical fertilizers containing nitrogen to the soil. Farmers who maintain large hog contained animal feeding operations (CAFO) will collect the swine manure in pits and then spread it on fields. However, pig manure is very low in nitrogen as well as incredibly stinky!

This field was harvested all night, ahead of a rainstorm. Both corn and soybeans must be quite dry in order to be stored in silos and transported by rail. But rain after a harvest is welcome for refreshing the parched soil for next year's crop. 

blue bellied clouds fringed

    

blue bellied clouds fringed

with rain falling on dry fields

ready for harvest

   Two days past the autumn equinox. It's been so dry all summer that some of the fields are ready for harvest early. Last evening I could hear the low roar of a combine in the cornfield to the east. In the morning the field lies shorn. Cold mist swaddles the swales, coating everything with heavy dew. By noon, a patchwork of blue-bellied cumulus clouds covers the sky. 
     I get out of the pickup truck on a gravel road between cornfields leading to a farm. The pale husks, spotted and streaked with mildew, are pulling away from the ears, which are beginning to drop down on the dark red stalks. The dull brown dirt between the rows is dry and barren. Nothing but corn grows in this soil laced with pesticides and herbicides, except a few gray grasshoppers with yellow wings and one bristling green burr in the row at the edge of the field. Close to the farmhouse a wide swath has been combined, perhaps a test strip to determine the moisture content of the corn, which has to be dry before harvesting. The ground is littered with chopped stalks, shredded leaves, splayed husks, broken brick-red cobs and a few golden yellow kernels. Walking into the field, I am exposing myself to the chemical brew, but our meadow borders a field -- corn one year, soybeans the next -- and when the wind blows toward the house, we inhale toxins.
     In the evening I stop again at the same spot to watch the sunset. In the west the clouds have turned dark blue with a slanting fringe of rain falling through deep pink sky on the horizon. One of the clouds looks like a giant shark with a gaping mouth full of needle sharp teeth about to swallow some small sea creature. While I'm watching the sky show, the farmer turns in, stops and rolls down his window. "It's beautiful," I say, to explain what I'm doing parked on his road. "The cornfield, the clouds, the sunset." He smiles and nods, then asks me where I live, by way of establishing who I am. Since I'm a near neighbor, all is well. I ask him how the harvest is going. "I was going to do the field by the house tomorrow, but it's too wet." 
     Just down the road, a combine is working a field of soybeans. The green and yellow John Deere looks like some kind of gigantic insect with its wide rack of conical teeth combing through the rows. In the dusk, with lights flashing and huge knobby tires kicking up a stream of dust in the dry field, the driver hurries to beat the downpour.